


Red Sky At Night

by sawbones



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 13:54:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15316920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: The rise of the Red General began with two men and a missed headcount; or, how Samson was lost to the Chantry and found by Corypheus.





	Red Sky At Night

**Author's Note:**

> I still think Samson is one of the most sympathetic characters in the DA series.   
> Contains shameless amounts of whomp and brief non-graphic mentions of rape.  
> Reading the [Paper & Steel short story](http://blog.bioware.com/2015/04/30/short-story-paper-steel/) isn't necessary but it is recommended.

“These hands,” Samson said. He paused thoughtfully, “These hands.”

“What, these hands right here?” Maddox wiggled his fingers as much as he could in Samson’s grasp, “What about them?”

They were beautiful, so fine-boned and soft like an artist’s hands. Not dainty though, not delicate; they were robust and well-turned like Maddox was all over, strong enough to grab him and squeeze him and hold him down. They were warm like mages hands so often were, and the lyrium in him could feel the magic in them, thrumming just below the surface, ready to be called into flames, or lightning, or sweet anodyne. That was a wonder in itself, one that Samson had never gotten used to in all his years in the Order.

“I like them,” he said.

He loved them.

Maddox smiled, and Samson couldn’t help but tip into another kiss. He wasn’t a handsome man, or a rich man, he wasn’t clever or powerful or particularly brave, but he was a man in love and that was better than anything. He did wish that they could be together in a real bed, in a real house, doing real things that real lovers did, but neither of them were born to a life that would ever allow that. 

If anything, it made their stolen hours all the sweeter, rolled up in threadbare blankets on the floor of a decrepit storeroom that hadn’t stored anything but broken crates for years. No-one else but the rats went to that crumbling corner of the Gallows; at first Maddox had warned against letting it make them complacent, but the fear faded with the years. 

The storeroom was their sanctuary, until it wasn’t.

Samson had just coaxed Maddox to crawl back on top of him when the door slammed against the rickety shelves they’d pushed behind it. One hard shove and they gave way easily to reveal an armored figured in the doorway; the Knight palmed off his helm, and Samson’s hands tightened on Maddox’s bare arms as he drew him closer.

Alrik smiled at the them, something sharp and cold that never quite reached his eyes.

“Found him.”

 

\--

 

There had been an attempted breakout, Samson heard later through the barred door of his quarters, and as was standard procedure after such things whether it was successful or not, a count was taken of the mages and the apprentices - a count that had came up one body short. The whole bloody tower had been looking for Maddox, unbeknown to him as he kissed and sighed and fucked away a few gorgeous hours in the dim light of a single stolen candle. 

They’d permitted Samson the dignity of getting dressed in the storeroom before he was marched away to be confined to his quarters; Maddox had been hauled out into the hallway, naked as the day his was born with his robes clutched to his chest. He didn’t struggle, didn’t shout or curse or raise a hand - but what he did do was so much worse. He apologised. 

_ I’m sorry, Raleigh.  _

It had followed Samson down the hall as they were both pulled in opposite directions. He didn’t realise at the time it would be the last thing he’d ever hear Maddox - the  _ real _ Maddox - say. It might have broken him if he did.

He was on as good terms with the guard at his door as he was with most Templars in Kirkwall, but she still wouldn’t tell him what they’d done with Maddox, or what they would do. All she would say was that they would come to talk to him soon, and that he would just have to wait - so wait Samson did, with his hands balled into fists and his heart in his boots. He sat on Rutherford’s bed, the one that faced the iron-barred window, so that he could see the paper birds on the sill and the dark star-splashed sky beyond them. 

 

\--

 

Meredith was speaking, and had been for some time, but Samson found he could barely concentrate on anything but the wood grain of her desk. He had been two days without his lyrium rations and he felt parched, and she was only repeating the same questions he’d already been asked before, just in a far more patronising tone.

“There will be gossip, of course, there always is - but I would not concern yourself with it too much,” she said, just as Samson drifted into a rare moment of lucidity.

Samson’s mouth was dry, so dry he could barely speak. He stared at her with stinging, red-rimmed eyes, “What?”

Meredith leant back in her chair with a heavy sigh, “It will be harder to cover up than usual, given the extent of the search and the panic it caused. The official story is that the mage, preying on your good nature, pressured you to illegally pass messages to a lover in Kirkwall. At the very least, that should deflect some of the suspicion of the  _ nature  _ of the incident.”

It took a moment for her words to filter through the aching fog in Samson’s head, “The nature--? Knight-Commander, I know we broke the rules here but there wasn’t...there wasn’t anything  _ indecent _ about this. Maddox didn’t pressure me into anything, neither of us did. There’s no stain on the Order here, I’m not like Karras or the others.”

“Perhaps this would all be so much easier if you were,” Meredith said, her expression hardening, “Do not misunderstand me here, Templar - this is no personal kindness. Normally I wouldn’t say you were worth the trouble of trying to save from a formal investigation and the scandal that would come with it, I always thought you too soft-bellied with the mages, wearing your sympathies on your sleeve, but you are the bearer of the sun shield. Clearly Guylian saw some merit in you I cannot, but that still means something to the Order.  _ You _ mean something to the Order. No-one can know that you are little more than a bleeding heart. If you look weak, then we look weak. At least this way, we can all save a little face.”

Samson pushed his tongue against his teeth to try and swallow down his anger. Meredith would rather he had raped Maddox than dared to love him. His interrogators had stressed that point during their questioning before: had he ever brutalised Maddox? Had Maddox ever used magic to make a thrall of him? They had been found soft-eyed and smiling, holding each other - surely that had been a mistake. They could turn a blind eye to anything in the Gallows but _ that. _

“Maddox,” Samson said, and the word caught in his throat, “Is he dead?”

Meredith raised her brows at him, inclined her head just slightly like she was trying to keep her own temper in check. Maker help him, she really thought she was doing him a  _ favour _ , “It would serve you well to forget about him. Focus on your duties, on the Chant. Clear your head of this sickness. Perhaps Cullen--”

“Sod Cullen,” Samson spat before he could help himself, “Sod him, sod you, and sod the bleeding Chant of Light too.  _ Is he dead? _ ”

“Knight-Templar Samson, I would caution you to tread carefully, “ Meredith said, “My graciousness only goes so far, and you are on thin ice as it is.”

Samson’s respond was a steely stare, teeth clenched. She stood up, put her palms flat on her desk; she narrowed her eyes as she studied him, and Samson felt like he was being raked by needles under her scrutiny, but he refused to flinch even as his hands began to shake. Perspiration pricked his brow. He wasn’t sure if the next time he opened his mouth he’d be able to stop himself from vomiting.

“Look at you,” Meredith’s voice was softer, crueler. She relaxed back into her seat, Samson clearly dismissed as a threat, “Two days without lyrium, and you look fit to collapse. It has a hold on you worse than any I’ve seen for a templar of your age. Keep pushing and you’ll be struck from the Order, Samson. Do you think you could survive that?”

“I don’t care,” Samson said, “I don’t  _ care _ .”

 

\--

 

He would come to care, of course, and perhaps sooner than he thought. After a few choice words about where Meredith could stick her rumours, he was escorted from the Gallows without so much as being allowed to collect what few personal items. He had a good idea what would happen to them: Meredith would quietly hang the sun shield on the stonework behind her desk, Rutherford would dig out the vials of lyrium from under his mattress that he could always smell but never had the guts to steal, and his paper birds - Maddox’s paper birds, ones he made by the dozen and left around the Gallows, the ones he’d never actually given Samson but that he’d rescued from wastebins and kindling boxes instead - would find their final flight in the fire. 

Heartbroken, destitute, and increasingly ill, the first week was the hardest, though it never really got any easier. Still, Samson struggled on. He’d been on enough patrols in the city to know where the vagrants slept, where the doss-houses were, what doors he could knock on for a half-cup of broth and a heel of bread. Lyrium was a different matter though: the only blue he could scare up was the watery, weak potions apostates used, but even those cost more than Samson could possibly afford, and left him feeling sick to his stomach more often than not. 

Samson knew how he survived;  _ why _ was a harder reason to parse.

His savior came to him in the Hanged Man, somewhere he was allowed to sit in from the cold and even scavenge from abandoned plates and tankards if he helped with the cleaning and promised not to be a bother: Thrask, playing cards with the dwarf who seemed to hold court at the tavern. Samson’s first instinct was to make himself scarce - he didn’t want to be seen like that, not by someone he’d once considered a friend.

But then Thrask had looked up by chance and saw him there, sitting in the corner with his head in his dirty hands, and those kind eyes were unreadable. Samson knew he should have turned down the ale, the food, the invitation of company, but he was starving, and he could smell the blue on him.

Thrask had a plan, he revealed in time, one which required a trustworthy man on the outside; Samson was almost relieved there was a catch. He would be sent a list of names now and again - some who needed help, and some who could help. All they needed was someone to bring them together, and for that, Thrask would see to it he was paid and fed. Samson was on the fence until he mentioned, with as much subtlety as he could summon, that he would send lyrium when he could as part of that payment.

Suddenly altruism had a certain appeal.

 

\--

 

It went on like that for a few years, scrappy, undignified, but alive. He’d get the names, he’d make the arrangements, he’d receive his payment. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was something. The ones sent to him were almost invariably mages - he’d expect nothing else from Thrask, the poor soft bastard. Most were apostates, but some were apprentices or Tranquil, even the occasional fully fledged Circle member. Those were the most dangerous, and the best paid, but they stayed with him in a way the others never did. 

He couldn’t help but wonder what things might have been like if someone had been there to help Maddox, to help him too. How many lovers had he reunited? How many families? The thought stung, made him want to grind his teeth over how unfair it all was, but it also kept him going when things became too dangerous, too difficult. That and the lyrium.

It couldn’t last - of course it couldn’t, and it didn’t. The harder Meredith squeezed Kirkwall in her iron gauntlet, the harder it was for anyone to come or go without notice. The lists of names became shorter, more infrequent, as did the payments. Things became desperate, and not just for Samson. Things in the city were climbing to a slow boiling point as the screws were turned, everyone could feel it. 

Sometime during the Qunari invasion, Samson lost touch with Thrask altogether. He didn’t know what had happened, but it was easy to assume the worst when the city was starting to blacken around the edges, curling up like burnt paper. He had to pull in every contact, every favour he’d collected over the years just to keep his head above the water and his feet out the fire. Suddenly altruism was a luxury in Kirkwall. He wasn’t proud of what he had to do, but he told himself that a few silver was a small price to pay for freedom (afterall, what would he have paid?). He told the mages that too. Most of them were too young to understand; the tears worked on him for the first few months, but he had to harden up and so did his refugees. 

 

\--

 

Put a blade through the forge too many times and you ruin perfectly good steel; burn a city down enough times and it never rebuilds quite right. It wasn’t like a forest fire, where the scorched earth fed the fresh green shoots at the first sign of rain. When calamity compounded calamity, already desperate people became harder, meaner. It wasn’t enough to cling to what little they had, they had to fight for it. Kirkwall had been one disaster after another, from the refugee crisis to the gang wars, from the Qunari occupation and siege to the Chantry’s destruction. It had been ten long years of strife, and then the Circle had broken. 

Flames licking the night sky had become an almost-familiar sight; the smell of burning an almost welcome reprieve from the reek of Darktown and the docks. The screams though, Samson never got used to those. They rose and fell through the streets like signal flares, following the Templars, the mages, the demons both groups had pulled through the Veil. Samson didn’t know what he was doing, where he was going. The fighting had spread from the Gallows to the docks, spilling into Lowtown and Darktown. Hawke wasn’t there anymore to clean up  _ this  _ mess, hadn’t been for a long time. Maybe that’s how things had gotten so bad. Most of the roads out of the city were compromised, including the hidden tunnels beneath the streets that Samson had used many times in his line of work, now riddled by opportunists and inhuman creatures alike as they hunted. 

Standing at the gates of untouched Hightown, watching with stinging eyes as hired muscle and personal guards pushed back the crowd trying to flee to relative safety, Samson swore he heard a voice over the ringing of steel being drawn. A voice, warm like the fires at his back. Too much smoke, Samson thought. He must have breathed in too much smoke. 

“Raleigh Samson,” the voice said again, this time almost right in his ear. He turned to Maddox at his side again, head shorn and robes bloodied but  _ alive  _ and-- Maker, if it wasn’t the smoke then it had to be a demon, pulling his heart out of his throat, laying it bare and silhouetted against the burning sky. 

Only, it couldn’t have been a demon. A demon would not have put that sunburst brand on his forehead because in Samson’s dreams, Maddox was whole.

“Maddie?”

“This is distressing for you,” Maddox said, and even though it was his voice, it didn’t sound like him at all. He didn’t move when Samson reached out and took him by the arm, just to check he was solid, “That is regretful. However, I am in danger. I need your protection.”

Samson swallowed around the tightness in his throat. He felt like he’d been kicked in the chest my a mule, but what could he say to that? “Are there any others with you?”

“No. The mages abandoned the Tranquil when the Templars attacked. Most of us perished in the Gallows. Those who lived are not likely to survive the night,” Maddox said. He paused as though waiting for Samson’s compliance, and then repeated himself, “I need your protection.”

Samson still couldn’t respond, couldn’t quite process what was going on yet, and so Maddox mimicked his stance, taking a hold of Samson’s arm. He inclined his head like he was trying to appeal to Samson, even as his posture was stiff and unnatural. The older Tranquil could do it well, mirror body language they’d re-learned from watching the mages and their guards; some were better at it than others, but it was never quite perfect. It had always made Samson’s skin crawl, but he couldn’t blame them. They only did it to survive.

He had nowhere to go. He had no food, no lyrium, hardly a few silver in his pocket. He could barely support himself, nevermind another person - a Tranquil, no less, so utterly helpless in the world. But Samson had been the cause of his helplessness, had he not? There was no way he could ever make that right, but he could try.

“I don’t know where we should head, but we can’t stay here,” he said eventually. Maddox didn’t say anything, simply looked at his with his dark, flat eyes, and when Samson began to pull him along by the wrist, he let himself be led as easily as a dog.  

 

\--

 

By the time they could leave the city, it seemed like there was no point. What could burn had burned, those who would fight had fought, and all that was left behind would remain - for a little while, at least. Samson found them a few rooms in Lowtown that had been abandoned, and that’s where they settled. 

With the Gallows in ruin and the Templars gone, there was no business to be had helping mages flee - those who had survived the purge had long since done so - but the place was left to those bold enough, or stupid enough, to pillage it. Samson took them across as soon as it was safe enough, and Maddox showed him all the hidden places the others hadn’t ransacked yet. Places only a Tranquil would know about, as they had free range of the Gallows. Weapons, supplies, tools, things that could be sold or scrapped - and yes, lyrium. It was in its raw form, pure enough to make Samson’s head ache just from being in the same room, but Maddox could work it into something usable. 

It seemed strange to Samson that what was perhaps the lowest point of Kirkwall’s long and strife-ridden history would be the most prosperous months since he’d been kicked out of the order. He had his own mini-black market running, a monopoly of sorts. He could even have been happy, if it wasn’t for Maddox. 

He hadn’t forgotten about him in the decade or more since they’d last been together, and as it turned out, neither had Maddox. Even though they were cut off from their emotions, a Tranquil still kept their memories, and to Maddox their love was like a book in a language he couldn’t read. He knew they had been intimate. He knew that they had shared a special connection, and could parse from simple observations that Samson still felt some kind of way about him. 

Maddox tried to talk about it at first:  _ you are still in love with me _ , like it was a comment about the weather. He wanted to know if it was a positive or negative with regards to how it would impact Samson’s care of him. 

“Our shared history was likely to provoke a desire to keep me safe,” he said one night as they were getting ready to turn in, “But I understand my Tranquility could just as easily cause resentment or disgust.”

He was right, of course. Samson  _ was  _ disgusted; Samson  _ was  _ resentful - but not of Maddox. How could he be, even now? Samson peeled his clothes off, grimy from a week of work without washing, and climbed into bed. After a moment, Maddox followed suit. Sharing a bed was a practicality, mostly, since they were short on space and keeping a fire going at night was wasteful. It didn’t make it any easier.

“I’m not going to leave you, don’t worry,” Samson said, a little too brusk. It wasn’t exactly a conversation he wanted to have. He pulled a little more of the threadbare blankets around him, careful not to steal too much from Maddox. He wouldn’t complain about the cold unless his toes were about to fall off - didn’t mean he deserved it.

“I can’t worry. I only seek clarification,” Maddox said. He usually lay down flat on his back like a soldier until sleep took him, when he’d curl up on his side like he used to, instinctively burrowing against Samson’s back for warmth. The body never forgot, Samson supposed. 

He couldn’t sleep after that. Kept turning it over in his head like fidgeting with a smooth pebble. He loved him, Maker help him he did. Loved him like the day he had left him, and it felt like picking at a scab that would never heal. Against all odds in the world, he’d found Maddox again, and managed to build a life with him, stole away from the Circle with him. even laid with him in their own bed just like they used to talk about - and he was further from his reach than ever before. 

Maddox rolled onto his back, awake again, if he had ever been asleep in the first place. Samson wondered if his own restlessness had disturbed him but didn’t ask. He couldn’t comfort him either way, couldn’t lull him back to sweet dreams. The silence between them was tense in a way that was foreign and new, until Maddox broke it.

“We could have sex,” he said, too light, too casual even as Samson seized up like he’d been slapped, “If you still desire me.”

“Maddox--” Samson hissed as he jerked upright, turned to face the man in his bed. He struggled to keep the anger from bubbling up out of his chest; he tightened his grip on the thin blanket until his knuckles went white, “Who the  _ fuck _ do you think I am - Alrik? I would never lay a hand on a-- on someone like you. You can’t ask for it. You can’t want it. I’m a shit, but I’m not that kind of shit.”

Maddox blinked up at him sleepily, as though he was sifting through Samson’s anger to find a response, “I don’t feel desire but I know you would not hurt me. I would allow it. I am still able to respond to physical sensation, even. Would it not help with your discomfort to resume our relationship as it was?”

The flash-fire anger faded away as quickly as it came, leaving behind a sense of shame and nausea that stuck to the inside of his ribs like tar. He reached out, placed a hand on Maddox’s head. His cropped hair bristled pleasantly against his palm; if he shifted his touch a few inches down, he could hide most of the sunburst brand. He was just Maddox, tired and handsome, watching him with patient dark eyes. It made Samson’s skin crawl. He let his hand drop.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said again, “ _ Ever _ , so you can stop this now. Trying to appease me. It’s my fault we’re in the shit, so I’m going to make damned sure I do right by you. Understand?”

“It wasn’t your fault, Samson,” Maddox said after a half-beat of silence. He sounded so earnest that Samson had to swallow around the sudden tightness in his throat.

It felt too raw to keep looking at Maddox, to keep pressing on a bleeding wound. Maybe Tranquil couldn’t lie, maybe he really thought it wasn’t Samson’s fault. It didn’t matter either way. 

“It’s late, Maddie,” he said, turning on his side again, “Try and get some sleep.”

 

\--

 

Samson never liked to sit with his back to the room, but the dwarf didn’t seem to mind; it meant no-one in the Hanged Man could see the vial of red liquid he held in his palm, fingers uncurling to show a glimpse of it like an oyster with a pearl. It shifted uneasily behind the glass, and even across the table, Samson felt his guts do the same. 

“Don’t you think it’s time to make them pay? Pay for what they did to you and your brothers,” the dwarf said. His dark eyes flicked to where Maddox was sitting, dragging over his brand, “For what they did to him?”

Samson’s stiffened at that. It was a cheap shot but he couldn’t deny the appeal it held, the idea of bringing the Chantry to its knees, finally punishing crimes that were ages overdue. He said he wanted justice, but what he truly wanted was revenge. 

“And this is how I do it?” he said, nodding down at the vial, “More lyrium? More filth to poison us? Swapping one leash for another fixes nothing.”

The dwarf smiled, thin and sharp as flint. There was a pinkish tint to his teeth, like blood, “This won’t collar you. It’ll free you. It’ll break you down and remake you, maybe not as the Maker intended, but as you desire. Power like you’ve only  _ dreamed _ of.”

Samson didn’t move, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the vial. He’d had a steady supply of lyrium since he’d found Maddox, but just being in proximity to the new stuff was making him itch like he’d not had a fix in days. What the dwarf was saying sounded too good to be true, but just feeling the aura that radiated from his hand made Samson believe him. It felt dangerous. 

Before Samson could say no, Maddox reached across and took the vial. He held it close to his face as though examining it, the dim red light it cast glinting in the darks of his eyes. He looked thoughtful, or as close to thoughtful as a Tranquil could be. After a moment, he closed his fist, vial hidden inside. He met Samson’s wary gaze and gave a single nod. 

“Alright,” Samson said at length, turning back to the dwarf, “Tell me about this Corypheus.” 


End file.
